Monday, March 14, 2016

Clinton/MSNBC Transparency Fail: Update

For over a week now, MSNBC has been touting its upcoming Town Hall event with Hillary Clinton, which is scheduled to take place on Monday, March 14 (tomorrow) here in Springfield, Illinois.*

But there is one, small hitch: no one in Springfield seems to know where this Town Hall is supposed happen, or how to go about getting a ringside seat.

MSNBC's web site yields no useful information, and neither the Clinton campaign website nor the campaign FaceBook page makes any mention of "town hall". Also the person staffing the only publicly available contact phone number for MSNBC informed me twice that "no one from that department" works on the weekends, and that I should try back "Monday through Friday" during regular business hours.

Weird how my local family-owned hardware store can manage to stay open on Sunday, but not the media capitol of the world.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be in Springfield on Monday to participate in a town-hall meeting hosted by cable channel MSNBC.

The town hall, moderated by Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's "Hardball" program, will air at 6 p.m. on the cable channel. No other details, including the venue and whether the public can see the event in person, were immediately released in an announcement from MSNBC.

...

Dear Clinton Campaign and MSNBC -- You don't get to call it a "Town Hall" if you won't tell anyone in the damn "town" where the damn "hall" is.

*Thanks for catching my date error.

UPDATE:

Apparently MSNBC does have spokespersons who work on the weekends. They just don't talk to proles like me. Based on SJR reporting late yesterday and the word on the street, it appears this will be an invitation-only event for pre-screened Clinton supporters and Democratic party functionaries.

Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, will participate in a town-hall meeting hosted by cable channel MSNBC at the Old State Capitol. The event will be taped at 2:45 p.m. and will air on MSNBC at 6 p.m. An MSNBC spokeswoman said Sunday a limited number of tickets for Clinton's town hall event had already been given out.

By contrast, the Ted Cruz event (which is also here today) is open to the public:

Meanwhile, a rally for Cruz, who is running second behind Donald Trump for the GOP nomination, will be held at the iWorship Center, 3200 Shaler Road, at 10:30 p.m.

The Cruz event is open to the public. People wanting to attend are encouraged to get a free ticket by using eventbrite.com.

Doors open at 9:30 p.m., and the rally is expected to last an hour. IWorship Center also plans to livestream the event on the church's website. Cruz's father, Rafael, appeared at iWorship Center last week

Dear Clinton Campaign and MSNBC -- when you are losing an open-door-and-welcome-one-and-all contest to Ted Cruz, you are hanging on way too tight.

Also for what it's worth. no Bernie Sanders event I ever heard of ever turned away the great unwashed.

Seems to be more and more routine. Back in 2008, I was a full time Obama campaigner. With relatively short notice, Obama was having a town hall in my area. The only invitees were known supporters. There was no restrictions on questions we could ask, but no consideration of making it a true open forum either. As to why (I'm sure it's obvious), a short time later, there was to be a town hall on the ACA with Sec Sebelius and newly minted dem senator Specter. Goopers DeMint and the reptile Dick Armey arranged for busloads of out of state repugs, herded by senate staffers, to show up, with typed scripts in hand. The meeting only lasted a few minutes, enough time for MSM to get sound bites of the then undefined Tea Party reading bullet points from their script.

I was going to say how could MSNBC and the Clinton campaign fuck up so badly then read Keith's comment. So, either not do "Town Halls" altogether or do them as large focus groups so they aren't weighted with just supporters or enemies.

Remember, this is the same Democratic party that scheduled a debate on a Saturday evening...on the opening weekend of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." It's like they don't actually want people watching them.

While I'm not surprised, I think Keith is on point with why things are like this.

Both Democratic candidates are having a hard enough time getting the media to pay attention to them in a serious manner. That same media/punditry class would like nothing better than a "humble, apolitical, American house wife, mother, and patriot" to call Hillary a lying bitch on camera then screech "Benghazi" and "Emails!"

Cruz can do whatever because liberals aren't flooding Republican town halls yelling "Facist!" or "Show us your Birth Certificate!" And if they did, just re-watch the video of the African American protester getting assaulted, tackled and arrested while the guy who committed the assault only later got arrested because the video went viral and made the police look bad.

This is an asymmetrical battlefield and the media is largely responsible for that.

While I also yearn for the days when our we debated our politicians with measured rhetoric in quorums near the Imperial Forum, things are a bit messier these days.

In the internet age, political plants are everywhere now, as are cameras. There is no unscripted moment. There are no journalistic standards. That means everything in your life must be stage managed, right down to the FUCKING FOOD YOU EAT. Doesn't anyone remember the Arugala incident of '08?

Republicans have brainwashed their voters. They can be relied upon to obey the Hive. Democrats are a coalition of voters, and there can be disagreements, which are messy to hash out on the internet.

So here's what happens when your party apparatus DOESN'T stage manage things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot

So somehow believe in the infallible wisdom of the proletariat? In the FUCKING UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? Really?

Something does not compute.

As for Bernie Sanders voters, one, Sanders isn't a threat in Republican eyes. So if anything, the Republicans are sending voters to CHEER for Bernie. That doesn't necessarily mean he's part of a great wave of voter wisdom. It simply means he has not been truly attacked yet by the corporate Borg. They have signaled their displeasure, sure, but they also haven't put any effort or paid any money to take him out yet.

If Clinton had an open invite, unscripted Town Hall forum scheduled anywhere in the US, there would be gasbags in the audience asking her about her husband's penis and female black actors blaming Hillary for her boyfriend's death in the Iraq War, with the rest of them filming her with their iPhones and Androids, muttering "cunt" and "bitch" under their breath.